Higher Superstition: The Academic
Left and Its Quarrels with Science by
Norman Levitt
A Good Book But Badly Written
With the emergence of cultural studies and the blurring of once-clear
academic boundaries, scholars are turning to subjects far outside their
traditional disciplines and areas of expertise. In this book, the authors raise
serious questions about the growing criticism of science by humanists and
social scientists on the academic left..
Personal Review: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and
Its Quarrels with Science by Norman Levitt
Academic fads have a startlingly brief lifespan: Last year's new thing is
supplanted by this year's new thing, which promises to transgress all
previous boundaries and explode the oppressive partiarchal paradigms
that are crushing the unprivileged. Everything that lies under the vague
umbrella of "postmodernism" is one of those this-year's-new-things. But

most of those academic fads didn't really go away; that's why, even though
it was published in 1998, this is an important and still-relevant book.
Gross and Levitt examine and systematically demolish a number of
postmodernism's anti-science subspecies. In a way, this amounts to no
more than swatting at a swarm of annoying academic insects; Gross and
Levitt are genuine scientists, so, unlike the academic postmodernists, they
are good at analyzing data and presenting logical arguments. And that's
what they do, devastatingly and humorously. It seems unlikely that a
densely footnoted and referenced academic study could be laugh-out-loud
funny, but this book is.
However, there's something important here, too. That is that the academic
postmodernists' attacks on science have a cumulative harmful effect of
deflecting young people away from real science, confusing the scientifically
illiterate public about scientific and technological principles and policies,
and, most dangerously of all, creating the impression that science is just
one of several possible "ways of knowing," all of which are equally valid.
No, they're not. The plain fact is that science works; it accurately
describes physical reality. Diverting intellectual effort and research money
to the study of alternative "ways of knowing" is wasteful and academically
bankrupt.
Read this book. It's still relevant and important. And it's very, very funny.
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